How Jonathan Blundell’s Higher Ed Experience Drives His Mission
Jonathan Blundell, Senior Director of Digital Experience at Dallas College, didn’t initially envision a career in higher education. His own journey—beginning at a community college—shaped his passion for making a meaningful difference in students’ lives. Today, as someone who climbed the ranks from catalog team member to digital team leader, Jonathan is committed to changing lives through better digital experiences and marketing strategies.
Building a Strategic Digital Experience Team at Dallas College
Jonathan oversees a diverse digital experience team at Dallas College, focused on web design, content, UX, analytics, and email marketing. He firmly believes the website is the college’s most visited—and most important—“building,” deserving strong investment and ongoing innovation. With a user-focused approach, his team strives to make information easy to find and the digital journey seamless for all students.
Why Accessibility is a Nonnegotiable in Higher Ed Digital Marketing
Digital accessibility isn’t just box-checking for Jonathan. He champions a philosophy that accessible user experiences are user-friendly by default, citing that roughly 25% of adults have some form of disability. His team sees accessibility as an ongoing responsibility, reinforced by collegewide initiatives and compliance actions following OCR complaints. Jonathan emphasizes the cultural shift required, with cross-functional teams, vendor partnerships, and rigorous testing—all with the goal of never limiting anyone’s access to transformational education.
Scaling Email Drip Campaigns for Higher Student Engagement
The podcast also dives into Dallas College’s sophisticated approach to email marketing. Jonathan’s team manages more than 65 automated drip campaigns, customized by academic area and interest. By delivering relevant, timely content—including dynamic deadlines and personalized touches—Dallas College achieves impressive 10–12% one-year conversion rates from inquiry to enrollment. Jonathan shares insights about experimentation, segmentation (including “future” vs. “now” student mindsets), and continuous improvement in both content and timing.
Community, Collaboration, and Continued Learning
Above all, Jonathan values the collaborative spirit in higher ed digital circles—encouraging knowledge-sharing, vendor alignment, and ongoing peer learning. He welcomes continued conversations on LinkedIn, at conferences, and across the community, always striving for more accessible, engaging, and effective higher ed marketing.
Read the transcription (coming soon)
Shiro:
Welcome to the Higher Ed Demand Gen podcast hosted by Concept three d. If you like our content, please follow and subscribe to us. As always, I’m Shiro Torre, your host. And today, I’m really excited to talk about why a true user friendly experience is an accessible experience and also how to scale your email enrollment marketing drip campaigns. And for the topic, I’m super thrilled to speak with Jonathan Blundell. He is the senior director of digital experience at Dallas College. Welcome to the show, Jonathan.
Jonathan Blundell:
Thanks, Cheryl. So glad to, be here with you.
Shiro:
Yeah. It’s it’s great to have you. I do ask all my guests this. So can you tell us what you love about higher ed?
Jonathan Blundell:
Well, you know, for me, higher ed wasn’t necessarily my first choice, both for just personal my personal life journey as well as, for a career. But I ended up, going to community college myself, after I kinda thought I was gonna go a different direction with my career. My mom was like, why don’t you go ahead and try out the community college, at least for a semester, for a year, see how that goes for you, and then make a choice after that. And so I did that. I enjoyed my experience. I learned a lot, and decided, okay. I’m gonna go ahead and pursue my bachelor’s degree and so forth. And so then it was after a few years, with working in a few working in, journalism and a few different, options.
Jonathan Blundell:
I ended up finding a a job here at Dallas College, which is actually where I was a student. And it’s just the idea that we’re changing and transforming lives, really has an impact for me. I I wanna work I wanna do work that’s meaningful, and so higher ed has really given me that opportunity where we see lives transformed every day with our students. And it’s not just their own life. It may be their kids. It may be their surrounding family and, hopefully, their community as well. So I get to be in a place where I make an impact in my community, and that’s what really, really keeps me going and keeps my passion going.
Shiro:
That’s fantastic. Like, in terms of, the role that Dallas College plays as well, like, that’s, like, the you’re the perfect example of, the out potential outcome of, like, someone who is on the fence about, you know, even higher ed as a whole. And so, I mean, that’s that’s a fantastic story. Thanks for sharing that. Sure. I know you told us a little bit about your background, but can you tell us a little bit more about your role as a senior director of digital experience?
Jonathan Blundell:
Right. So, I started with the college actually working on the catalog team. We have, we had moved the college had moved to an online digital, catalog, I think, about three, four years before I started. I may be getting that time off a little bit. But, I started doing that, was working with, just basically web updates on a kinda regular basis after, like I said, working in journalism and actually doing some work for the local county. So I started doing that, and then this position opened in marketing. And and, really, marketing and telling stories has kind of been my passion for a while as well, and so I saw this as a great opportunity. I came in as a a web editor or rich media developer producer is what the title was at that point.
Jonathan Blundell:
So that was in about 02/2012, when I moved over to marketing. And I’ve been blessed and able to move up, through the department, and with our organization where now I lead the digital experience team. That’s primarily, the website that we oversee and we run. We also do the front end work for, our internal site, which is SharePoint. We do email marketing and do some analytics, publishing WordPress sites here and there. And so we kind of work in a lot of ways, our team oversees the digital platforms that the college owns. And so we, work on the design and layout and so forth for those tools.
Shiro:
That’s fantastic. Can you tell us a little bit more about your team? Like, what what’s, what different roles are there Sure. Underneath you
Jonathan Blundell:
and what you’re doing? I believe I have eight people, in my team. Some of them, you know, reporting to a few different people. But, email marketing, senior manager of email marketing is one. I have a senior manager of integrations and development, so they kinda help with, doing some development on the front end side of the house. I have the rest of the team is primarily web. I we call them web editors, but they’ve got various titles and so forth. But they’re really focused on the design and the layout of the website. I also have they all have kind of areas of specialty.
Jonathan Blundell:
So I have two people that are really great with front end design. They do a lot with our overall design platform, design system that we’ve set up. We have one person who’s more of a content editor. She does a really great job making sure that we’re following AP style and making sure that our content is consistent. I have one person who’s focused a little bit more on UX, and so he’s doing UX research and making sure that we’re developing, things along the way. So, and then we have a couple of people that do analytics and a couple of people that are kinda just all generalists. So it’s all, you know, it they’re all doing web editing on a daily basis, but they all kinda have their areas of expertise as well.
Shiro:
Yeah. I really it’s exciting to hear that you’ve had all this investment into your website because I live by the statement, that your higher ed website, your front end website is the most visited campus or sorry, building on campus. Right? And so, like, that’s why it should also deserve the biggest investment. Like, you know, there’s buildings that get tons of investment for, construction. Right? And and website maybe sees this tiny portion of that, yet more people visit your website than any other building on campus. So, it’s great to see that you guys have a a big team for it.
Jonathan Blundell:
Well, I’m glad I’m glad that I’m not the only one that believes that. So I a % agree with that. I think that our website is the front door for so many people in the community. It’s it’s largely it’s our largest marketing tool as well. And so we wanna make sure that we’re doing what we can to make that the best website. I know, you know, I don’t wanna claim that it’s the best website. I don’t wanna claim that it’s perfect and that it doesn’t have issues, but we wanna do our best to make sure that students can find the information they need as easily and quickly as they can.
Shiro:
Okay. Great. I I feel like we can do a whole another episode on, website design, experience, strategy, how it leads the student journey, but we’ll get to that another time. Yep. Well, let’s talk about one portion of, a website that you’re really passionate about. I know you in our pre call, you said accessibility is a nonnegotiable. Right? Can you tell us a little bit more about your stance on digital accessibility?
Jonathan Blundell:
Yeah. Sure. So accessibility, has always you know, it it really wasn’t something that was front and center for me early on in my career. I I knew that was something we kinda had to do in a lot of ways, but, it really took some kind of nudging, and I think just having my eyes open to see how accessibility really impacts the end user that made a difference for me. Some recent studies have said I think the CDC says that roughly twenty five to twenty six percent of adults in America have some level of disability. And so for me, if if twenty five percent of my audience might have a disability of some sort, I don’t wanna cut my message off from those twenty five percent of people. I don’t want them to be limited in transforming their lives through Dallas College. I want them to be able to have the full access of everything that we offer them.
Jonathan Blundell:
I wanna make sure that they have the full access for our entire message. So that’s kind of why the passion has, you know, hit me again. And there’s a really great, illustration that Microsoft shared a few years ago, and I’ve shared it out, multiple times where, it shows that every person there’s different levels of disability that people might have. We always think of, well, disability is someone maybe with a cane or a wheelchair or maybe it’s someone who’s completely blind. But in reality, I I discovered this even when I was a kid with, or not with a kid, was a parent, with newborn twin boys. I would walk around and I’d have both of my arms full with twin boys. And all of a sudden, I’m limited in my mobility. All of a sudden, I can’t open a door as easily or I can’t get the stroller up a ramp or something.
Jonathan Blundell:
And so it’s like, oh, yeah. This is this is something that even though I’m not physically impaired as as some people might be at this moment, my mobility is impaired. I’ve had, you know, some surgeries since then, and and I’ve I had physical disabilities at that point. And so it’s something that even though we may not today have an actual limitation, at some point in our life, it’s almost guaranteed that we will. And so no matter what stage of life someone might be in, we wanna be sure that they can access our content, access our learning, access the transformative nature that our college provides.
Shiro:
Absolutely. No. You make such a great point. As I age, my eyesight’s definitely getting more shot. Right? And Right. That happens naturally to everyone. And so a good call I had with someone, from a school in the South said, they run a lot of events. Right? And it’s a community led event.
Shiro:
So they that one of the things they prioritize is making sure, like, all the font is touchable from, like, the back of the room. Mhmm. Because they they wanna cater to their whole community, not just the portion, and they hand out flyers that can also you can read alongside so that if you are having issues with eyesight, then there’s a way for you to understand the content being displayed. So you make a great point there.
Jonathan Blundell:
Yeah. And I Appreciate that. I think I mentioned this before as well, but if we believe that our message is important enough for the community to to hear and to see it and to understand it, then why would we try to limit that? Why would we put any limitation on people accessing our services or our messages? And accessibility keep helps us to avoid limiting or restricting people from that.
Shiro:
Absolutely. And I know it’s not just you. It’s a whole team effort. It’s a school wide and often a school system effort. But how has this culture of accessibility been adopted into your team, your school, your, systems as well?
Jonathan Blundell:
Yeah. It’s it’s kind of been a slow process in some areas. Now we’ve always had some accessibility champions, within the college. I can think of some folks like David Wood who has been accessibility champion for as long as I’ve known him. And they’ve done the work. They’ve done the hard work of trying to push accessibility at all levels and so forth. And I think probably what what shifted things a lot for us was, not long before COVID, I think it was 2017, ’20 ’18. I may be getting my ears off a little bit.
Jonathan Blundell:
We did end up getting an OCR complaint. And so as part of that, it really put a focus on accessibility for the college as a whole. So even though we had pockets of people who were doing some really great work and, you know, working on the website and working on this for their classes and so forth, having an OCR complaint kinda shines a spotlight on where you need to improve. And so we were actually, even not long before that, we had a team that was set up to start really focusing on accessibility, work on some policies, work on some guidelines. But that OCR kinda gave us a stab of like a steroid stab, I guess, that we had to kinda speed things up and and get things moving on that. And so that’s what we did. We created a team, that was cross functional for the college. We started putting in some policies and really started hammering in on, or honing in on what we needed to do as a college.
Jonathan Blundell:
And so that was a we’re also able to use that to help get some additional training. We did a full audit of our website as well and got some training related to that. Made improvements not only to our website, but to some of the other services that we have, some of the other tools that we work with, the classes, of course, they were able to do some audits, and they made improvements as well. So it was kind of that in injection of, okay. Now we’ve really gotta focus on this, and we’ve gotta move forward. And so that’s been kind of where we’re at as far as moving the culture ahead. My team, though, I think, luckily, they’ve all adopted a policy of, you know, accessibility first, make sure that what we’re doing is accessible, make sure that our website is accessible. I love that they have a passion for this as well, that they understand this is something we need to do for the betterment of our community and for the betterment of our students.
Jonathan Blundell:
And I love that they’re not afraid to to call people out if there’s accessible issues, including myself. Not too long ago, I put up a page and, shared it with the team and said, hey. Anybody have any thoughts or whatever else? And and my team one of my team members, like, this spot here, here, and here is not accessible. It’s like, oh, you know, thank you for noticing that. You know, I I kinda had a mental block at the moment, but they were they were quick to call me out and say, hey. We’ve gotta make sure that we make this accessible. And so I’ve been privileged that my team has that passion now, and they wanna run with it and make sure that they’re doing the best that they can.
Shiro:
That’s fantastic. And I know with recent, the new title two ruling to, from the ADA on digital accessibility, if you haven’t heard, has some new deadlines set for, public organizations, including, universities that get public funding. And there’s gonna be some deadlines to meet that WCAG compliance by 2026 or 2027 depending on your school size, believe you fit into that 2026, umbrella. And so I think all this good work that you’ve been doing is gonna help you definitely, stay on top of this new ruling as well.
Jonathan Blundell:
Yeah. And it’s been great as well, I’ll say, to have partners who are committed to accessibility as well. We have some partners and, you know, vendors and so forth that it’s not quite of it’s not quite front and center. But, I know, you know, maybe a shameless plug here, but we worked with Concept three d, and one of the things that we’ve been passionate about them is actually that y’all y’all are interested in accessibility is a front and center for y’all. Our new CMS that we’ll be moving to accessibility is a huge passion for them as well, And so we’ve been able to work with them. They’ve made improvements on our code as we’ve moved into the new system. So it’s it’s exciting to work with those type of partners and to find those partners who can really help us be the best that we can be.
Shiro:
No. I appreciate that. Yeah. And it it at Concept three d, digital accessibility and accessibility is definitely front and center. It’s one of our core values. And as we develop, we think about accessibility first for sure. And so we have a team of developers and project managers managers who are on top of it testing and making things are making things making sure things are accessible. So it’s been great.
Shiro:
Do you have any tips for working with vendors and making sure that they’re digital accessible? I have one comment here. It’s like, do they have a statement on digital accessibility on their website would be, like, my one thing? Just just for starters.
Jonathan Blundell:
Yeah. So it’s been it’s been probably, a a bit of a journey for us as we’ve worked with different vendors. And, of course, every vendor has different, thoughts and practices. I remember I was at South by Southwest few years ago. I think it was probably pre COVID, but I asked a vendor about their accessibility. They said, oh, yes. Our tool is completely accessible. You can view it on Chrome, on Google, and maybe Internet Explorer at that point.
Jonathan Blundell:
And I said, no. But, like, accessibility, like, people’s screen readers, and they had no clue what I was talking about. So you have that experience, and then you have people who are you know, here’s my VPAT. You know, here is the audit that we’ve done in the last year or two years, whatever it might have been. Here’s our accessibility statement. Here’s here’s our person who is actually in charge of accessibility for our company. So it’s kinda having those conversations hopefully upfront before you actually sign the contract and you know what that that vendor is looking for. So, I mean, just and just kinda maybe recap.
Jonathan Blundell:
I think, generally, we’re looking for a VPAT. We’re looking for accessibility statements, and we’re looking to see have they audited their their product themselves. We had some companies that we were working with during our OCR complaint where we ended up basically doing an audit of their tool just because we needed to make sure that it was accessible, and we provided that information. But I was like, it’d be really great if you did this yourself on a on a regular basis, so that we’re not having to audit and and make fixes on our own.
Shiro:
Yeah. Alright. I think one great part of the accessibility community, that I’ve learned is is that people are willing to knowledge share. Right? And say, hey. Like, I think you’re missing points there or, you know, this portion is a little tricky. Like, we it might not be accessible and, like, just kinda having open arms in terms of, like, understanding that, you know, we’re all trying to get towards a common goal, and it’s a journey. And so, that’s one thing I’ve I’ve noticed because, you know, some of the partners we work with definitely come back and say, hey. Like, you know, this portion, we we found a buck, etcetera.
Shiro:
And, you know, we’re willing to work with it. That’s been that’s been amazing to see.
Jonathan Blundell:
Yeah. And I’ll say too, I think, to that point, there are some you know, we’ve worked with tools as well where on a checklist basis, you know, an automated checklist, they may fit all the, you know, the standards. And even my you know, I’d say this even sometimes on our own website. We can run a check and everything looks good, but then I start gate digging into it, and you actually start testing it maybe with a screen reader or keyboard, tabbing and so forth. And you start realizing, well, it meets the the quote, unquote standard, but it’s not actually usable. You know, what we’ve coded here still doesn’t quite, you know, meet the standard of what we would like the person to be. Even though digitally, yeah, we checked all the boxes, but we need to actually get someone who’s using the tool, understands how the tool works to see how it actually all fits together.
Shiro:
Yeah. Well, this is fantastic. I could talk about this for forever, but, we have another topic here that I’d love to get to, which is email marketing. Right? So, you do a lot of things. Right? Website, email, caring about access digital accessibility as well, but, I was pretty surprised to hear just the scale of all the email marketing campaigns you’ve been a part of. Can you tell us a little bit more about you’ve been working on the last couple years?
Jonathan Blundell:
Yeah. So, this is actually goes back not long after I joined marketing. We were at that point just sending basically email newsletters, to our employees and to students. And we were getting to a point where our current system at that time couldn’t support us because of our size and because of our scale. And so we started looking for a new vendor, and we got to talking, with a couple different folks. And as we were talking and going through the whole implementation process, one of the new features that we’re able to do with that new tool, we were actually able to set up email journeys, which was new exciting thing for us in 2015 or so. And so we talked through that. And, you know, their first thought was set up this email journey, try it out, see how it works, set up something basically so that you can kinda help be proactive for your students, so that maybe they can get some of their answers their their questions answered via email versus always having to call somebody or go to the campus and so forth.
Jonathan Blundell:
And so we set up a general campaign initially. It was about five emails at that point. And it’s basically just kinda answering questions about Dallas College and telling them, hey. Here are some things you might expect as a student. Here are some services you might be interested in. We got that up and running with them, and then we switched to, getting a little bit more programmatic. So we started looking at some of our high high value programs and some of our programs that had, you know, a high number of requests and and, questions coming in. So we started building campaigns for those from a programmatic standpoint.
Jonathan Blundell:
And so, really, we started really digging into that and scaling it up fairly quickly. Luckily, we had a contractor on board that that was able to help us write a lot of that content. And so, we ramped up to about forty, forty five campaigns, within about two, three years, I think, is is about what the time frame was. So we’ve been running with that for about five years. And then now we’re actually scaling it back up, as we’ve gotten a few more resources in the college where we’re adding essentially, our goal is to add a campaign for every academic area, so that everything when you come to a website, you can get a special personalized email campaign about that area of, academic area that you’re interested in. So we’re at about 65 right now. That includes some campaigns specifically for our schools. It can it includes, campaigns specifically for that makes it about 55, academic programs, I believe, as well as our general campaign.
Jonathan Blundell:
And they’re all kinda similar. It’s roughly five or six emails depending on the academic area. They’re spaced out of over about a two to three week period. In the middle of it, we throw in now an, an actual email that’s kind of, quote, unquote, personalized, that comes from our one of our team members that says, hey. You know, hope you’re enjoying this email, the information that you’re getting. Here’s my contact information if you’d like to reach out for some more details. Here are some other links that might be helpful for you. So that’s kind of thrown in the middle of it.
Jonathan Blundell:
And now we’re getting to where we’re actually expanding this out a bit more where you get your initial four, five, six emails about an academic area, and then you get enrolled into the campaign for the school that that academic area is a part of, and then you get rolled into the general one if you haven’t been enrolled in those previously. So we have roughly about a month’s worth of content that’s kind of rolling out all the time, and it’s basically automated for the most part. We go through and we do some checks to make sure the content’s current, make sure links are working, and all those types of things. But, that’s what we’re doing about 65 campaign now. I hope that by, the end of the year, we’re closer to 75, and then we’re gonna be adding some more even after that. So it’s been a really cool thing to see. It’s been really the ROI on it, in my opinion, has been great. We’re looking at about a ten to twelve percent conversion rate from the time someone signs up to within the first year.
Jonathan Blundell:
Ten to twelve percent of people who sign up end up being a student, enrolling, at the college. Now I don’t wanna say that email is the only thing that they looked at. I don’t wanna say that no one else talked to them. I don’t wanna claim that we’re the sole source of that conversion, but it is good to see that within a year, ten to 12% of those people become a student. And so that I think, partially, that shows that, hey. They were interested enough at the beginning. But, hopefully, we were able to keep nudging them and able to send them information that was useful for them so they could feel confident about becoming a student.
Shiro:
Absolutely. And I will say attribution is never one one touch or single source channel ever ever. Like, even for as a consumer, like, you’re gonna get an Instagram ad. You’re gonna have a friend tell you about a product. You can see it in a different channel. Like, it’s never a a single source journey. So that’s incredible to to get that 10 to 12% conversion rate. You mentioned that halfway through the initial drip, you have more of, like, a personalized, like, casual, it sounds like language to reach out to admissions person.
Shiro:
How is the return on that email? I like this strategy, by the way.
Jonathan Blundell:
So it’s it’s interesting. That one tends to have a little bit higher open rate, but we don’t get a lot of necessarily clicks or responses from it. But it’s interesting that kind of in the middle of the campaign, at least what we’ve seen historically, is that does tend to have a bit of an uptick, as far as the open rates. So that’s been nice to see. And that’s probably why we I mean, that’s part of why we put that in there is we wanted to say, hey. If it’s coming from an individual versus Dallas College digital communications, does that change the behavior at all? So haven’t seen a whole lot of responses as far as people following up, like a one to one response. But at least we know they’re still engaging with the email campaign, and they’re still looking for information. Surprisingly, I think the one thing that’s made the most difference for engagement level in the last year or so is we ended up putting, just a block towards the bottom of the email that just said, are you ready to apply? So every single one of the emails outside of the personal one has a little graphic says, are you ready to apply? Click here for the application.
Jonathan Blundell:
Click here for, to talk to a college coach or an adviser, as most people call them. And that basically doubled our click through rate at that point. So we went from about a one to 2% click through rate to about a 4% click through rate. So Mhmm. That was really helpful and telling to see that one change can make a difference in how people are engaging with it and how people are using it. So we’ve been happy with that, and it’s just one of those things we keep trying to experiment with. How can we do this a little differently? In fact, I was just talking with my, email guy today, and he was working through some of the coding. So now it also has a reminder of here’s the start dates for the upcoming, semesters.
Jonathan Blundell:
So for second eight weeks, that’s now in there for for fall, for Maymester. That information’s in the email so that they kinda get that added information. And it’s coded so that once second eight week starts, that message drops off and it changes to something else. So it’s trying to be dynamic, trying to be more engaging, giving them the information that they need right up front.
Shiro:
That’s very cool that it’s it’s dynamic as well. That’s I gotta, like, get my email person to listen to this too. That’s that’s fantastic. Nothing and nothing drives engagement and clicks like a deadline. Right?
Jonathan Blundell:
Right. Exactly. That’s awesome. Do it now. Yeah.
Shiro:
If you have one thing to learn, if you don’t have a submit your application, the bottom of your email, try it out, maybe that’s a great piece of learning. So, walk me through your email drip one more time. So let’s say I’m interested in, like, a a business analytics Mhmm. Certificate or program that you have going, which would probably fall under the business school. And then so if I were to request a a inquiry on the business analytics sorry, business intelligence and analytics, I would go through about four to five emails there. I’d get rolled into email marketing about the business school as a whole, and then later, get more information just on Dallas College in a general drip. That’s kinda like your your strategy or your, your workflow through the email campaigns.
Jonathan Blundell:
Yep. Correct. And and same thing too is if you drop into one of the schools first. So if you go to, say, our school of creative arts page and you subscribe to that program, you’re gonna get the emails about the school, and then you’ll roll into the tell me more. I think the next phase and and what we really wanna see is from that school series is we wanna give them an option to say, okay. Yeah. This school sounds pretty interesting. What are my other options, or what are my options within the school? So then they can select, well, you know, I’m interested in art.
Jonathan Blundell:
I’m interested in music. I’m interested in dance. Whatever those actual academic areas might be, and then we subscribe them to that. So that’s getting some more forms set up, some more interactions in the email. So that’s kind of our next phase of where we want to get to. But right now Mhmm. If you like you said, if you start with a program, you’re gonna go program, school, general, or school, and then general.
Shiro:
Fantastic. And, I don’t is does Dallas College have a lot of nontraditional students as well?
Jonathan Blundell:
Yeah. I couldn’t tell you a percentage right off the bat, but, yeah, adult learners is big for us, as well as nontraditional. I wanna say at least within last few years, our average age, was 26. And so even though our typical student is 25% of our students are dual credit, but the average age at our campuses is around 25, 20 six. And so, we definitely have a broad mixture of students, taking classes with us.
Shiro:
Yeah. And I’d imagine, like I’m just making assumptions here, but, the the email trips. Right? Like, having that workflow built in is really important because adult learners, they’re interested, but it might not work out for them this year, but it can next year. And so, like, having that database of contacts is probably really crucial because they’re not looking at, like, a timeline between, oh, between 18 and 19 years old, they have to go to school. It’s it’s like in the next five years, when can I go do this or something, like Yeah? Closer to that.
Jonathan Blundell:
Yeah. I think that’s I think that’s a great point from an adult learner perspective for sure, because we know that education has a long sell. We know that it’s not an instant. I saw an ad, and so I’m gonna sign up today. We know that higher ed tends to be a very long sell. But also too, I think that also applies to our younger students. I think, you you know, the studies that I’ve seen younger and younger students are considering college and thinking about college. My my son’s in the eighth grade, and he’s already convinced that he’s going to Texas A and M, which is perfectly fine.
Jonathan Blundell:
But I I remember when I was in the eighth grade, I had no clue what I was going to do for a career, what I wanted to be, you know, if higher ed was even a possibility or not possibility, but something I wanted to do. But he’s already thinking about it. My sixth grade daughter is already thinking about it. So even younger and younger, they’re doing some research. They’re getting on to our websites. They’re looking at what’s possible and, you know because they’re having to start thinking about high school. It’s like, what classes do I take in high school, which will lead me to college? So for both ends of the spectrum, I think that’s a really great point.
Shiro:
Yeah. That’s that’s fascinating. I didn’t even think about it. It applies to both parties too. That’s Mhmm. That’s fantastic. In terms of just, like, key learnings, experiments that you you run, do you have anything you’d like to share for those just kinda starting their email trip campaigns or trying to figure out new experiments they could try?
Jonathan Blundell:
Yeah. I think, if you’re just starting out, you know, first of all, just just get something out there. Start with a general campaign. See what questions your, advisors, your call you know, if you have a call center or people at the front desk, what questions are they getting asked, so that you can kind of answer some of those questions for folks upfront. Experiment with layouts. I mean, we keep our layouts pretty simple. It’s usually just a header image with some text, and then we have kind of some quick links towards the bottom. And so we kind of experiment with that.
Jonathan Blundell:
We’ve experimented with our with our pacing. So at one point, we had about a week in between each email, and then we kinda shrunk it down to about three days. And now we actually alternate where, you get your first email, wait two days, get an email, wait one day, wait two day you know, so it kind of varies as far as that, cadence. So experiment with that. Play with that. Another thing that we saw with our advertising campaign in the fall was we’ve, done some segmentation studies, as a larger marketing department. And one of the things that we saw was, through segmentation and mindsets of our students, we kinda grouped our students into two different mindsets. So we have a future mindset, and then we have a now mindset.
Jonathan Blundell:
So very much in a conversation of what is the long term sell. We have some that are coming in. You know, they’re eighth graders or, you know, maybe they’re 25 year or whatever it might be. They’re kinda considering college. It’s not like, hey. I’m gonna do something right now, but maybe this is a dream of mine or something I wanna get to. So that’s kind of the future mindset. But now it tends to be more of I need to do I need to make a change in my life.
Jonathan Blundell:
I need to do something different. I need to do you know, upscale my career, whatever it might be. So they’re they have a little bit different mindset. And just the forms that we presented, we started seeing differences in their behavior. So the future mindset and I wanna keep doing some more testing on this so I can actually verify it. But what we saw with our fall campaign was the future mindset was more likely to fill out the form if we had more questions on it. And we had some questions like, when are you wanting to apply? Are you ready to start now? You know, those types of things. Whereas the now mindset, if we gave them more questions, they tended to not to fill out the form.
Jonathan Blundell:
So it was very interesting that mindset and that those kind of segmentations. And so I don’t have a silver bullet of you can only put three questions on your form, and you’re always gonna get this response. But my thought is if it’s a future student, they’re leery of filling out a form because they’re like, I’m not thinking about this for the next two to three years. I don’t want someone hounding me today. And I’ve been on the end of that where I filled out an interest form for a master’s program. I got hounded for weeks. I was like, I’m this is, like, long term. I’m thinking about something long term.
Jonathan Blundell:
Don’t hound me for this. And so I think those additional questions, like, when are you wanting to enroll or are you ready today to apply? Those types of things kinda gave a little bit of comfort to the future students so they didn’t feel worried about filling out a form to get a bunch of emails.
Shiro:
Wow. This is, a fascinating segmentation. I think that’s the first time I’ve talked about this. Great idea, by the way. How are you actually going about segmenting, like, future and now? Like, are you based on, like, age? Like, if they’re, you know, 16, then, you know, it’s, like, future or just curious how you’re actually segmenting them from a Yeah. Data point.
Jonathan Blundell:
So I would say I’m not the expert on this. Our CMO is is definitely probably a lot more enthralled with this as well as some of our advertising folks. What we did when we did that segmentation study was we found that there that some of the demographic characteristics tend to be more prevalent in certain areas. So, for example, the future student tend and I’m I’m again, I may be getting this information wrong, so my team might apologize if if you’re like, no. You got it all wrong. But for our future students, that tends to be roughly a twenty year old Hispanic, female, whereas our now student tends to be in, you know, late twenties, male. And so there’s different demographics that will align with kind of that segmentation. So when we’re doing advertising, we’re able to you know, Facebook doesn’t have an option for future segment or now segment.
Jonathan Blundell:
But we can kinda see where people over index and say, okay. This is where we want to target for this particular audience or this particular segment. We’ve also used it in some of the, like, the faces of the campaign. So if we know that a particular demographic over indexes for the future or over indexes for the now, we tend to put those types of faces and and those people in those particular ads.
Shiro:
Yeah, man. This is fascinating. You probably don’t wanna give up all your secrets right now, so I totally understand.
Jonathan Blundell:
Well, you know, my CMO, you might you might be able to get her on, and then she can talk a lot more about this.
Shiro:
Oh, this is great. Future yeah. This, segmentation is is a great, great idea. Appreciate you sharing a little bit of that as well. I know we’re just at about time here. I’m wondering where our listeners can follow-up with you, learn about all the good work you’re doing.
Jonathan Blundell:
Yeah. For sure. I think probably LinkedIn is the best place. That’s where I try to to share some of those things, whether it’s a random accessibility tip or or thoughts on that or, lead generation. I try to share some things like that, every few weeks or so. So definitely reach out. Always happy to connect with other people in the higher ed industry. Love learning from other folks, going to conferences and and hearing from them or connecting with them online and and hearing what they’re doing.
Jonathan Blundell:
So there’s a lot of opportunity for us to grow and learn from each other, and I just that’s what I love about this community.
Shiro:
I can’t I I feel exactly the same way. Is are there any, conferences you’re attending or planning to attend in this year?
Jonathan Blundell:
Well, so definitely, Texas Association of Community College Marketers, that’ll be in June. I I believe, some of the listeners, some of the folks, will be familiar with that. Also, Digital Collegium, hope to be back. I went to my first Digital Collegium conference last year, and so, hopefully, I will get to go back this year or I believe it’s October, November, is when that is. So looking forward to
Shiro:
that. That’s amazing. And, some folks from Concept thirty should be at both those events as well. The the the new rebrand, I gotta get used to it. Digital Collegium. Exactly. Formerly Hyatt Web. No.
Shiro:
This is great. Well, Jonathan, it’s it’s been such a pleasure talking to you. It’s been really, really helpful learning about your stance on all this, and I think there’s another episode in the works for website. So let’s let’s chat again. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah. Thank you, Shiro. Really appreciate the time and appreciate the opportunity to
Jonathan Blundell:
share. So thanks so much.
